How the artist Florian Raditsch creates a connection between California and Tyrol | With a Halo of Smoke and flame behind at the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum
Munchies Art Club Magazine supports the artist Florian Raditsch with his contemporary unique drawings , Florian Raditsch belongs to the first artists in our special featured artist section.
Since then we have kept in contact, and are impressed by his development, his power, and straightforward thinking.
The last time we saw him was at this year's the 2020 Parallel Art Fair in Vienna . Always a pleasure catching up with someone so motivated and working so hard as an artist.
For instance, now, he is partaking in an artist program in Washington DC, called Stable Arts, Washington DC, which is part of a Residency Grant of the from the Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria.
Now, in his new exhibition at the Tiroler Volkskunst Museum, he combines his unique drawings, with sculpture works and videos in an exhibition called With a halo of smoke and flame behind.
The artist from California loves Austria and Vienna. He lives and works here with his beautiful wife.
Visit the exhibition at The Volkskunst museum in Tyrol. It's an impressive show to explore. Traditions and customs come together in a contemporary narrative with a halo of smoke and flame behind.
Florian Raditsch presents the exhibition 'With a halo of smoke and flame' at the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum | Press
From September 10, 2021, the works of Florian Raditsch in the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum will show fascinating parallels between Tyrol and California. Under the title “with a halo of smoke and flame behind”, the native Californian contrasts the human longing for originality with the exploitation of nature by humans.
With the help of drawings, room, and sound installations, regional ideals and traditions are illuminated and broken and allowing new ideas to spark.
In turn, the works make the audience aware of the role that decay and renewal play in natural and cultural processes.
The exhibition shows how we fuel future perspectives on nature and culture.
Tradition reloaded What distinguishes the Tyrolean nature? What is a typical Tyrolean tradition like? What is Tyrolean tradition? The images that come to mind when answering these questions are inevitably shaped by existing ideas.
Against this background, Florian Raditsch designed an exhibition in the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum that brings together Tyrol and California, nature and culture, destruction and renewal.
“With a halo of smoke and flame behind” shows drawings, pastel works, audiovisual works, and room installations that allow a new look at the well-known.
The artist starts with the similarities between tourist facilities in the Alpine region and California in terms of architecture and design from the 1920s
In both regions, he finds references to the original landscape, while a rustic or “primitive” formal language reflects and builds up traditional ideas.
Raditsch derives color tones and the wall design of the exhibition from these observations. His works put the historical rooms, which were also built into the Folk Art Museum during this period, in a new light.
Wood and fire run through Raditsch's exhibition as leitmotifs. Both elements embody construction and decay: On the one hand, wood stands for longevity and can be seen as a link between culture and nature.
The raw material plays this role in the Alps as well as in the USA. On the other hand, wood also symbolizes vulnerability when you consider how human interventions in nature endanger the forest.
The relationship between people and fire is similarly ambivalent as with wood.
Fire provides warmth, but it also harbors danger.
Large forest fires have wreaked havoc in California in recent years, while (even though) small fires are traditionally kindled in the same region to preserve nature and the landscape.
Wood and fire, destruction and rebirth: to bring these opposites together, Florian Raditsch made masks from partly charred tree bark.
The wood comes from the forest fires that raged in the artist's home in September 2020. Other works in the exhibition were also made from burned wood.
The artist used countless charcoal pencils to meticulously create drawings.
A lively dance of death Raditsch's works encourages visitors of the exhibition to rediscover the traditional rooms of the Folk Art Museum and to rethink the concept of the original.
A digital performance presents a dance by the artist Magali Moreau to compositions by Raditsch.
The interplay of dance and drums indicates both the natural confrontation of humans with nature and the cycle of transience and renewal.
In the Stubenforum, the artist picks up on historical reports, stories, or songs from the Alpine region and California in drawings and a multi-room sound installation and thus traces the contradictory relationship between people and their environment.
The installation also links the two regions and emphasizes the changeability of tradition.
The Stubenforum reminds the artist of the traditional longhouses of some indigenous North American tribes that served as meeting places and houses.
The installation exaggerates this connection and shows the apparently inviolable, private time capsule as a meeting place.
Destruction and renewal - The motif of change between decay and rebirth that runs through the exhibition can be found not only in biological but also in cultural or political processes.
Against this background, the exhibition perceives the representation of natural and cultural landscapes as a flowing development.
Old perspectives are questioned and specifically broken to create new ideas. These in turn determine how we perceive and continue our natural and cultural heritage.
The past two centuries shaped the representation of Tyrol as a traditional country. F
or example, the ties to home in the 1920s also influenced the development of the collection of the Tyrolean Folk Art Museum, which in turn maintains the earlier image of Tyrol.
In addition, the perception of landscape and culture that has prevailed to this day, in particular, has been designed in favor of tourism since then.
Such effective promotional images can be found in Tyrol as well as in California.
In the coexistence of the two regions, “with a halo of smoke and flame behind” invites visitors to become aware of their responsibility: After all, it is our ideas that determine whether and how the cultural and natural landscape will be preserved in the future.
About the Artist Florian Raditsch:
Florian Raditsch was born in 1987 in central California. He studied fine arts in New Mexico and at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.
In his work, the artist deals with cultural and socio-political issues.
Concerning border areas, he deals with questions of identity. His installations, pastel works, and large-format charcoal pencil drawings, which are based on a unique technique, have already been exhibited in the USA, Austria, and Germany.
Raditsch presently lives and works in Vienna.
Follow the Artist on his Instagram Account:
Additional Information
Universitätsstraße 2, Innsbruck
Curators: Mag. Dr. Karl C. Berger + Mag.a. Rosanna Dematté
Instagram Account Landesmuseum Tirol:
Munchies Art Club Magazine says thank you to the artist Florian Raditsch, Tiroler Landesmuseum the curators : Mag. Dr. Karl C. Berger and Mag.a. Rosanna Dematté and to the photographer Rudolf Strobl, Johannes Plattner and Wolfgang Lackner for letting us share this great show with our audience.
